It can be a difficult group to advocate for: high-achieving teens going to the best schools, living in comfortable homes with successful parents.

This group sounds like the most privileged among us. Professor Suniya Luthar also sees them as among the most vulnerable.

Luthar, professor of psychology at Arizona State University, recently published research based on the New England Study of Suburban Youth, which followed two groups of adolescents from affluent communities into early adulthood. Luthar’s research suggests accomplished teens in great schools are an under-recognized at-risk population facing higher risks for substance abuse than their peers.

“We found alarmingly high rates of substance abuse among young adults we initially studied as teenagers,” Luthar said. By age 26, the rates of addiction for men in this study were twice as high as national norms; rates were three times as high for women. Rates of addiction ranged from 23 to 40 percent among men and 19 to 24 percent among women, according to the study, published in the May journal of Development and Psychopathology.

“The most common one we hear about is Adderall,” Luthar said. “Who has it. Can I buy it. Who can give it to me.” She finds that experimentation starts younger in this cohort and continues through college, where it can turn to ecstasy and cocaine. “When you are drinking vodka in Polar Springs bottles in seventh grade, it’s a problem.”

So why did these students in suburban schools, with high standardized test scores, robust extracurricular activities and white-collar professional parents, show consistently higher use of substances?

The reasons are likely multifold, according to Luthar: High pressure among teens to get into elite universities, access to disposable income, widespread peer approval for substance use and parents lulled into a false sense of security. When parents see their children performing well in school and in demanding activities, they don’t believe they could have serious underlying issues with drugs and alcohol. It makes sense that the earlier children start to use alcohol and drugs, and the more frequently they do, the more likely it is they will develop addictions down the line.

“It’s hard to face the truth,” Luthar said, “that it may be your child who is cutting or snorting Adderall.”

In her samples, the parents were educated -- doctors, lawyers and teachers -- families with access to resources for treatment, but also less likely to openly talk about deaths due to overdoses. She says a key to addressing the problem is drawing more attention to the data, funding more research on the topic and talking to teens about the research results.

“For high-achieving and ambitious youngsters, it could actually be persuasive to share scientific data showing that in their own communities, the statistical odds of developing serious problems of addiction are two to three times higher than norms,” she said.

It makes sense that public policy has focused on the risks at the opposite end of the economic spectrum. Children born into chronic poverty face greater challenges and risks of negative outcomes than their peers. It can be difficult to argue for supports for affluent children already born into such a strong safety net, as opposed to those struggling to have their basic needs met.

But Luthar argues that it’s a different type of intervention needed with the population she studied. It’s not a call for diverting resources, but for widening the conversation to include the risks they face. It’s also worthwhile to figure out how to minimize the risks for this population, she says. She wants more research on kids who grow up in pressure-cooker, high-achieving schools.

One school she studied had six students die of overdoses in a single year.

“How many times are we going to look the other way?”

Clayton Lessor, 56, talks openly about his terrible childhood.

He describes his late father as an alcoholic who was very abusive at home. He grew up with broken bones, black eyes and chronic abuse. He remembers the nights he slept in the backseat of a car.

He lived with his grandparents six months out of each year from when he was 4 years old until he was 16. One week from his senior year of high school stands out as particularly awful: His mother burned down their house, his dog died in the fire and his girlfriend dumped him.

“I don’t remember being in school the last two months,” he said. Still, he managed to graduate and eventually joined the Air Force, a decision he credits with saving his life. During his 24 years of military service, Lessor got married and divorced twice. He decided to get a degree in psychology, hoping to figure out why he kept picking the wrong people to marry.

“I needed to look at myself,” Lessor said. What he discovered was a significant amount of pain from his troubled and estranged relationship with his father.

“I missed out on a lot of developmental stuff,” he said. Lessor worked on “re-parenting” himself and learning the lessons he never got from his father. From this work, he decided he wanted to help other boys in similar situations. He created a 10-week “rite of passage” therapy group for boys who missed out on growing up with a healthy father figure.

He also self-published a book for mothers of adolescent boys, “Saving Our Sons: A Parent’s Guide to Preparing Boys for Success,” which serves as a guidebook for his 10-week Quest therapy program. In it, he lays out a path for healing those suffering from what he calls “father wounds.”

What exactly is a father wound? It could be the pain from having a physically or emotionally absent father, an abusive father, or one who just doesn’t know how to raise a son, Lessor said. It could even be a lost connection over time.

More than 2,000 boys have gone through the Quest program over the past 17 years. The groups meet for 90 minutes once a week in Lessor’s St. Louis-area office. He tells the boys, between the ages of 11 to 19, the things he wished he’d known at their ages. The session topics include identifying their own pain, facing it and learning how to cope with it in healthy ways. He wants to give them a place to deal with shame and anger, feel supported by a community and find a sense of achievement through their deeds.

He was 31 years old before he went into therapy, and says most men who suffered in their childhoods will end up self-medicating or running from the past to avoid dealing with how it impacts their present lives.

“The wound doesn’t heal itself,” he said. “It doesn’t just go away with time.”

He recalls the final straw with his own father. He had come home from the Air Force to get married when he was 20 years old, and went to visit him.

“He tried to kill me. He choked me. He was drunk,” Lessor said. “That was it. I was done.” He spent a long time working through his own grief, and says it’s possible to come through the other side stronger than before.

“It’s scary and painful,” Lessor said, but “you come out better if you finish the work.”

For him, it also brought a sense of acceptance.

“My childhood was suffering,” he said. And yet, he’s forgiven his parents. The emotion that comes up occasionally from the past traumas is just sadness.

“I don’t have any anger or hate,” he said. “It comes up once in awhile -- what comes up is just sadness, and then I move on.”

More importantly, he has found meaning and purpose through those life experiences.

“It wasn’t the childhood I would have chosen,” he said. “(But) my mom and dad were a gift to me.”

It was those dysfunctional relationships that led him to do the work that is so meaningful to him today.

Daniel Stone’s senior year should have ended the way he had been planning for so long: with prom and graduation and parties with his friends.

Instead, he has spent the last seven weeks at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in St. Louis undergoing ECT, commonly know as shock therapy, in an attempt to treat an onset of delirium. Doctors think it may be related to CHARGE syndrome, a rare disorder Daniel was born with that causes physical abnormalities and developmental delays.

At 18 years old, Daniel is at a second- to third-grade level academically. But as an outgoing special needs student, Daniel has been involved in many clubs and activities at Triad High School in Troy, Illinois. The day of his graduation, he put on his cap and gown, walked around the hospital and watched an online broadcast of the ceremony with his family.

His parents, Kurt and Linda Stone, wrote a letter to the senior class, which Kurt read to them during the rehearsal a day before the graduation. Kurt broke down in tears several times during the address. He wanted the class of about 250 students to know what they had given his son and their family. The following is part of what he said.

“In late 2003, when Daniel was 5 years old, our family was at a crossroads and Linda and I made the decision to relocate our family to Troy from Indiana. The move was for our entire family, but primarily for Daniel. We wanted Daniel to benefit by being in one school district for three reasons: a special education program with case management for all his school years, continuity with teachers through the grade levels, and consistency of friendships from year to year.

“You have done it! You are Daniel’s friends. From January 2004 to May 2017, you, the Class of 2017, have provided the consistency of friendship we hoped and prayed for Daniel.

“Every parent’s desire, especially parents of a student with special needs, is for our child not only to be cared for, but to be loved for who they are.

“You have loved our Daniel! So we thank you for the many ways you have demonstrated your love for Daniel. You loved Daniel when you:

... tied his shoes.

... sat at the table with him in the cafeteria, so no one eats alone.

... nicknamed him ‘Big D!’

... rode bikes with him on his birthday.

... laughed with him when he makes silly animal sounds.

... asked him how he was doing, and you stopped to really listen to his response.

... volunteered to be his partner in P.E.

... were his seatmate on the school bus.

... traveled with him to watch and cheer for the University of Evansville Purple Aces basketball team.

... planned and hosted after-school holiday parties for the the Life Skills students.

... helped him with an art project.

... included him in your group on the football student fan bus to away/playoff games.

... played, and sometimes won, doubles tennis matches.

... gave him a ride home after basketball practice and games.

... bought a delicious fresh-baked cookie for a fundraiser.

... gifted him a can of Crush soda on Valentine’s Day from the band.

... toured Washington, D.C. during the eighth-grade trip to the nation’s capital.

... noshed with him in New York City on the band trip.

... petted the bum of a koala bear with him in Australia during the summer trip.

... invited him to your house to watch University of North Carolina Tar Heels basketball.

... made sure he had a date, or was his date, to homecoming or prom.

... cheered for every three-point basketball shot he launched, and taught him to show the ‘3-baller’ sign for every one he made.

... gave up a basketball shot of your own, to pass the ball to Daniel so he could shoot it.

... signed one of the four giant ‘Get Well Soon’ poster cards delivered to him at the hospital.

... counted measures and measures of beats in the musical score so you could cue Daniel at the very moment he needed to play the suspended cymbal or strike the triangle during a band concert.

“This is just the beginning of the list, and you know it, of the ways you have not only cared for Daniel, but loved him. And for all of that and your genuine friendship with him, we and the entire Stone family are profoundly grateful.

“There’s a spiritual song titled, ‘When It’s All Been Said and Done’ -- listen to it sometime during your personal quiet time -- with these lyrical lines:

‘When it’s all been said and done

All my treasures will mean nothing

Only what I’ve done for love’s reward

Will stand the test of time.’

“What you’ve done is love a friend,” said Kurt. “It will stand for eternity.”